hinge – July 2019

hinge 275_60

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This recent building at NUS is an unabashedly

Modernist block that harks back to some of

the fine work produced in Europe a century

ago. Which is not to say it isn’t contemporary

for 2019, or even that it is nostalgic. At the

medium and small scales, it is most obviously a

building of our time. But huge, concrete blocks

devoted to civic or academic purposes, with

grand, immediately clear schemes, can’t help

but remind one of Le Corbusier or the Bauhaus.

The building has a primary forward face

overlooking a verdant clutch of mature trees

that allows it to open up in enjoyment, offering

occupants a rejuvenating amenity in such a hot

climate as this. Supported by slender, concrete

pilotti, the rectangular mass projects outwards

at its top, and then steps back from its front

plane at various points and levels, and in

different ways. Often, the resultant terraces are

simply generous, shaded outdoor spaces looking

into the upper branches beside them; ideal

places for pausing between classes, chatting

with friends, doing some reading, or just having

a snack in. They are ‘treehouse spaces’ on a

steroidal scale; an update of the wonderful

verandahs that graced colonial buildings in the

Asian tropics... and eminently logical. The glazed

walls behind them give onto classrooms, offices,

corridors, and galleries inside the building.

Cool fact: some of the interstitial tertiary

spaces can actually be dismantled and

reconfigured as experiments for the design

students... or to adapt the building to future

programmatic needs.

‘Inside’ proper (in Singapore, this means ‘within

air conditioning’), the building’s transparency

is consistent: spaces look through each other,

or up and down to each other, and generally

there is a sense of being atop a kind of

enormous jungle-gym. Natural light is abundant,

but shaded by overhangs or transom-height

louvred screens. Surfaces are rough and

ready for students and their teachers. And,

always, distant views are offered as backdrops;

we’re not sure how anyone concentrates on

work here. But they obviously do. There are

National University of Singapore

Singapore

Serie Architects, with Multiply Architects

NUS School of Design & Environment

Photography by Rory Gardiner